16 Years Since the Medak Pocket Massacre

“Destruction was well organized, systematic and total. Homes were reduced to rubble by detonations and dead livestock littered the area”, UNPROFOR spokeswoman Shannon Boyd about the Medak Pocket massacre. Photos available here

“This is a Serb Village, Slit All Throats!”

September 9 marks 16 years since the massacre Croat forces committed in the villages and hamlets south and southeast from the town Gospić in Serbian Krajina, called Medak Pocket (Medački Džep) — a UN safe haven — mutilating, raping, setting on fire and killing 88 Serbs. Memorial services to the victims were held throughout Serbian lands, and in the Church of Saint Mark in Belgrade.

“My son and I were asleep in the house. It was around 6 a.m. when the first grenade hit one of the houses which immediately burst into flames. I called my son. He said: ‘Mam, we won’t leave the house because they are bombarding’.

“I heard one Ustasha circling around the house. He came to the window and saw me inside. He activated a hand grenade and threw it inside. When it exploded he stood back up to see if it killed me. I was only wounded, but I pretended to be dead. He went behind the house and fired an automatic rifle (…) The other ones came in front of the house afterwords, in a transporter and on the tank. They didn’t stay long, but four Ustasha stayed in front of the doors. They did not speak our language, I believe they spoke German [they probably spoke Dutch, another Germanic language, as it was established that 13 Dutchmen also took part in the massacre]. When two Ustasha joined them, they asked the interpreter to translate. He said: ‘This is a Serb village, slit all throats, even the cats! Kill everything, nothing must stay behind, including children.’

“A number of them wearing the black masks arrived, some thirty of them, maybe more. When they spread through the village I went to the other room to see if my son came back. He wasn’t there. I went out of the house so they wouldn’t burn me alive. I crawled through the fence hedges to escape. Inside one thick hedge I bandaged the wound and stayed there all night and during the next day…”

No Sign of Human or Animal Life

After the massacre, Croat forces handed over to Serbs 52 corpses. Members of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) serving in Croatia carried another 18 bodies, which were mutilated and set on fire, out of Medak Pocket. In the year 2000, 11 bodies were found hidden in the sewage pit.

Croat troops, aided by the Croat civilians from the region, plundered and then razed to the ground all three Medak Pocket villages — Divoselo, Čitluk and Počitelj and dozens of nearby hamlets, following the “scorched earth” policy of the Croat war leaders.

Of the 84 bodies found, 8 remain unidentified, while the remains of 4 of the Medak Pocket villagers are still being searched for.

Canadian UNPROFOR troops recovering mutilated bodies out of Medak Pocket

Following the slaughter, which lasted from 9-17 September 1993, UN commander in Croatia French General Jean Cot, said that French and Canadian UN battalions “could not prevent the slaughter of the Serbs, including elderly and children, by the Croatians”, testifying that Croat troops “didn’t leave a cat alive” in Medak Pocket.

In the UNPROFOR Press Release published on 19 September 1993, General Cot made a following note: “I have found no sign of human or animal life in the several villages we passed today. The destruction is total, systematic and deliberate.”

UNPROFOR spokeswoman Shannon Boyd issued a press release in the Croatian capital Zagreb on September 18, 1993, in which she said: “UNPROFOR troops found at least 11 hamlets in the Medak Pocket completely destroyed […] It was assessed that the destruction was well organized, systematic and total. Homes were reduced to rubble by detonations and dead livestock littered the area.”

“The girls had been raped. Then shot. Then set on fire.”

Canadian troops testified that “all livestock had been killed and houses torched”.

Canadian peacekeeper Tony Spiess was one of many Canada’s soldiers who suffered nightmares after witnessing the devastation left by the savage Croat troops.

“The Croatian militia had been trying to keep the Canadian troops from uncovering their ethnic cleansing of a Serbian village, Spiess says, confirming accounts recreated in the 2004 book by Carol Off, titled The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada’s Secret War.

Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, witnesses of the slaughter Croat troops committed in Medak Pocket. Part 1 (parts two and three available on YouTube).“When the shooting, bombing and mayhem were finally over at Medak Pocket — with no Canadian deaths — one of the things Spiess remembers most was the odour of death, everything from horses to humans.“The smell will never go away,” he said.

Was the Gotovina verdict fair?

22/04/2011

Emotions are running high in Croatia after the ICTY issues its verdicts.

By Natasa Radic for Southeast European Times in Zagreb — 22/04/11

Many Croats regard Ante Gotovina as a national hero. [Petar Kos/SETimes]

The international community views them as criminals, but to many Croats they are national heroes. On April 15th, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found former generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac guilty of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.

The verdict sent many Croats, angry over what they see as a miscarriage of justice, into the streets to protest. Writing in her blog, former Justice Minister Vesna Skare Ozbolt expressed her frustration.

„After five years of the bloodshed and aggression, after five years during which Serbian aggression forced the secession of Croatia’s east and south, after Tudjman proclaimed a general amnesty for the rebel Serbs, after he sent me to negotiate with them hundreds of times and for hundreds of times we heard ’no‘ … now it is said that there [was] a joint criminal enterprise established in order to ethnically cleanse the Serbian population,“ Skare Ozbolt laments.

„I am sad and disappointed,“ writes Funky Business. „Personally I believe that the general is innocent and this judgment means that politics won over justice.“

But some take a different view, arguing that Croats are allowing their own nationalism to blind them.

„I am sad because I live in a country where hot shots still rule; I am sad because I can see that my people do not have the courage to look into the eyes of the truth,“ writes Brod u boci. „I am sad because today, we Croats, don’t have the courage to undergo the catharsis and make a historical step forward in our heads that would open the path towards the future.“

Serbian bloggers, meanwhile, insist that Gotovina doesn’t deserve some special exemption from international law. „Gotovina wasn’t on trial for the military part of the operation, rather for the lack of regard and cruelty toward civilians,“ writes Sale on B92, rejecting the argument that the general’s actions were justifiable on strategic grounds.

„Croatia is persistently refusing to face the sins from its own past,“ claims Slobodan Jovanovic, an analyst at the New Serbian Political Thought website. „Rather, it is completely convinced of being the only one on the side of good in the ‚homeland war‘, in which the Serbs were the sole aggressors and the ‚bad guys‘ who deserve contempt for their atrocities.“